I suspect that, in Marino Faliero, you and yours won't like the politics, which are perilous to you in these times but recollect that it is not a political 'play, and that I was obliged to put into the mouths of the characters the sentiments upon which they acted. I hate all things written like Pizarro, to represent France, England, and so forth. All I have done is meant to be purely Venetian, even to the very prophecy of its present state.

'Your Angles in general know little of the Italians, 'who detest them for their numbers and their GENOA 'treachery. Besides, the English travellers have not been composed of the best company. How could they?—out of 100,000, how many gentlemen were there, or honest men?

'Mitchell's Aristophanes is excellent. 'the rest of it.

Send me

These fools will force me to write a book about 'Italy myself, to give them "the loud lie." They prate about assassination; what is it but the origin ' of duelling-and "a wild justice," as Lord Bacon 'calls it? It is the fount of the modern point of honour in what the laws can't or won't reach. Every 'man is liable to it more or less, according to circumstances or place. For instance, I am living here exposed to it daily, for I have happened to make a 'powerful and unprincipled man my enemy;—and I 'never sleep the worse for it, or ride in less solitary 'places, because precaution is useless, and one thinks ' of it as of a disease which may or may not strike. It is true that there are those here, who, if he did, would "live to think on 't;" but that would not ' awake my bones I should be sorry if it would, were they once at rest.'

LETTER 389.

You will have now received all the Acts, corrected, ' of the Marino Faliero. What you say of the "bet of 100 guineas" made by some one who says that he 'saw me last week, reminds me of what happened in 1810; you can easily ascertain the fact, and it is an ' odd one.

In the latter end of 1811, I met one evening at the Alfred my old school and form-fellow (for we were within two of each other, he the higher, though both very near the top of our remove) Peel, the Irish se'cretary. He told me that, in 1810, he met me, as he 'thought, in St. James's-street, but we passed without 'speaking. He mentioned this, and it was denied as 'impossible, I being then in Turkey. A day or two afterward, he pointed out to his brother a person on 'the opposite side of the way :-" There," said he, ““is the man whom I took for Byron." His brother

instantly answered, "Why, it is Byron, and no one ' else." But this is not all :-I was seen by somebody 'to write down my name amongst the inquirers after 'the king's health, then attacked by insanity. Now, at this very period, as nearly as I could make out, I ' was ill of a strong fever at Patras, caught in the 'marshes near Olympia, from the malaria. If I had died there, this would have been a new ghost story 'for you. You can easily make out the accuracy of 'this from Peel himself, who told it in detail. I suppose you will be of the opinion of Lucretius, who (denies the immortality of the soul, but) asserts that from the "flying off of the surfaces of bodies, these 'surfaces or cases, like the coats of an onion, are

'sometimes seen entire when they are separated from 'it, so that the shapes and shadows of both the dead ' and living are frequently beheld."

But if they are, are their coats and waistcoats also 'seen? I do not disbelieve that we may be two by

some unconscious process, to a certain sign, but

' which of these two I happen at present to be, I leave you to decide. I only hope that t'other me behaves like a gemman.

'I wish you would get Peel asked how far I am ac'curate in my recollection of what he told me; for I 'don't like to say such things without authority.

'I am not sure that I was not spoken with; but this also you can ascertain. I have written to you such ' letters that I tsop.

'Yours, &c.

'P. S. Last year (in June, 1819) I met at Count Mosti's, at Ferrara, an Italian who asked me "if I knew Lord Byron?" I told him no (no one knows 'himself, you know). "Then," says he, "I do; I met ' him at Naples the other day." I pulled out my card ' and asked him if that was the way he spelt his name: 'he answered, yes. I suspect that it was a blackguard navy surgeon, who attended a young travelling 'madam about, and passed himself for a lord at the post-houses. He was a vulgar dog-quite of the 'cock-pit order-and a precious representative I must have had of him, if it was even so; but I don't know. He passed himself off as a gentleman, and squired ' about a Countess ** (of this place), then at Venice, an ugly battered woman, of bad morals even for 'Italy.'

LETTER 390.

TO MR. MURRAY.

'Ravenna, 8bre 8°, 1820.

'Foscolo's letter is exactly the thing wanted; firstly, 'because he is a man of genius; and, next, because he ' is an Italian, and therefore the best judge of Italics. 'Besides,

'He's more an antique Roman than a Dane;

'that is, he is more of the ancient Greek than of the 'modern Italian. Though "somewhat," as Dugald Dalgetty says, "too wild and salvage" (like "Ronald ' of the Mist"), 'tis a wonderful man, and my friends 'Hobhouse and Rose both swear by him; and they ' are good judges of men and of Italian humanity.

Here are in all two worthy voices gain'd:

Gifford says it is good "sterling genuine English," ' and Foscolo says that the characters are right Vene'tian. Shakspeare and Otway had a million of advantages over me, besides the incalculable one of being 'dead from one to two centuries, and having been 'both born blackguards (which ARE such attractions to the gentle living reader); let me then preserve the only one which I could possibly have-that of having been at Venice, and entered more into the 'local spirit of it. I claim no more.

6

I know what Foscolo means about Calendaro's spitting at Bertram; that's national-the objection, 'I mean. The Italians and French, with those "flags ' of abomination," their pocket handkerchiefs, spit 'there, and here, and every where else-in your face 'almost, and therefore object to it on the stage as too 'familiar. But we who spit nowhere-but in a man's 'face when we grow savage-are not likely to feel

'this.

Remember Massinger, and Kean's Sir Giles

'Overreach

'Lord! thus I spit at thee and at thy counsel! 'Besides, Calendaro does not spit in Bertram's face; 'he spits at him, as I have seen the Mussulmans do upon the ground when they are in a rage. Again, 'he does not in fact despise Bertram, though he affects 'it,—as we all do, when angry with one we think our 'inferior. He is angry at not being allowed to die in his own way (although not afraid of death); and re'collect that he suspected and hated Bertram from 'the first. Israel Bertuccio, on the other hand, is a 'cooler and more concentrated fellow he acts upon principle and impulse; Calendaro upon impulse and example.

So there's argument for you.

'The Doge repeats ;-true, but it is from engrossing 'passion, and because he sees different persons, and ' is always obliged to recur to the cause uppermost in ' his mind. His speeches are long-true, but I ' wrote for the closet, and on the French and Italian model rather than yours, which I think not very 'highly of, for all your old dramatists, who are long enough too, God knows :-look into any of them.

'I return you Foscolo's letter, because it alludes also to his private affairs. I am sorry to see such a 'man in straits, because I know what they are, or 'what they were. I never met but three men who 'would have held out a finger to me: one was your'self, the other William Bankes, and the other a ' nobleman long ago dead: but of these the first was 'the only one who offered it while I really wanted it; 'the second from goodwill-but I was not in need of